3 Dead in Shooting at Chicago Courthouse

Published: July 21, 1992

CHICAGO, July 20—
A man on trial for eight bank robberies slipped free of his handcuffs in a courthouse garage today, wrestled a gun from a Federal marshal and fatally shot another marshal and a building security guard before killing himself, the authorities said.

The accused man, Jeffrey Erickson, 34 years old, a former police officer in Hoffman Estates, a Chicago suburb, was being returned to the Metropolitan Correctional Center after a court appearance at the Dirksen Federal Building at the time of the shootings, said Ross Rice, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In the building's basement garage, Mr. Erickson managed to free one of his hands from the handcuffs and wrestled a service revolver away from a deputy United States marshal, then shot and killed another deputy marshal, Roy Frakes, 30, Mr. Rice said.

Mr. Erickson shot and killed a building security guard, Harry Belluomini, 50, after the guard shot him in the back, Mr. Rice said.

Mr. Erickson started to flee, but then stopped and killed himself, the F.B.I. agent said.

In addition to the bank robbery charges, Mr. Erickson also faced state charges in the wounding of a police officer who tried to stop him for a traffic violation in November 1991.

He was arrested Dec. 16, 1991, in Schaumburg, while he and his wife, Jill, were preparing to rob another bank, prosecutors said. His wife fatally shot herself that day while trapped in a van after a 10-mile chase.